


on days like this

by heliosae



Series: A red thread of lightning [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Female Harry Potter, I promise this is much happier than it sounds, Master of Death Harry Potter, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Platonic Soulmates, Romantic Soulmates, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, just have to get through some of the sad bits to get to the happy bits
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-04
Updated: 2019-06-02
Packaged: 2020-02-21 14:37:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18704326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heliosae/pseuds/heliosae
Summary: there is a correlation (causation) between the times tony shattered and harrie died





	1. For the first die young

**0.**

When they are young and their only connection through their dreams, they used to tell each other of different mythologies. Harrie's favourite was of the Dionysus, a god of madness and frenzy with wine in his blood and rebirth in his veins. Anthony would devour those of creation and war, taking in those that tell of Hephaestus and Hera, of Daedalus and Icarus, of Ares and Athena. They would sit and imagine a world of wings that did not drip wax, of loving fathers and devoted mothers, of family that was family and love that was love.

Together they would whisper about the machinations of Loki, the battle prowess of Thor, of battle-harden Odin and the prophetess Frigg. They would speak of poor Baldr, powerful Freyja and the terrifying Hel. They would whisper of hidden children like Fenrir, Jörmungandr and Sleipnir.

They would speak of druids and Morrigan, of the seidhe and the magic that flowed through the old world. Harrie would listen with rapt attention to all the new stories that Tony would find, of magical horses, terrible woes and great giants.

They would sit side by side on these dreams, within sprawling gardens, rolling meadows and underneath open skies. They would take each other's arms, tracing the names that said they belonged to one another.  _Harrie Lily Potter_  written in languid strokes on Tony's arms, with winding and looped letters.  _Anthony Howard Stark_  written with quick marks on Harrie's arm, harsh, demanding but ultimately  _his_.

They would soon find out that those legends they would listen and retell would tell of fallacies and devastation, of humanity and its vices and the damnation that awaits both heroes and villains. And so they decided that they would make their own legends.

There would be tales about a man that flew closer to the sun then even Icarus and never falling, only to rise high into the clouds, stars, cosmos; and about a woman who looked at death's face, only to laugh, laugh, laugh.

* * *

**1.**

Harrie Lily Potter is three when she meets Anthony Edward Stark. He is five. He knows he is dreaming and she knows it too. The world, a futuristic utopia is great and all but intangible, impossible. Soulmates normally meet in life, but they were never conventional. There was a sense of something odd in their dream, a sense of something magical that sat strange in Tony's scientific mind but felt at home for Harrie.

It is Tony that sees her first, when he is standing on top of a building of red brick and gold windows. She is sitting by the pond that has Captain America standing proudly with his shield in the air, triumphant and perfect.

He thinks he falls in love with her from the start. This girl must be what mama used to say about soulmates – that you knew from the moment who that someone was. This girl must be what Anna Jarvis used to whisper stories about – something magical and wondrous.

Tony jumps down the terrible fall that had it been reality would have shattered his bones and destroyed his body. The girl with curls the colour of what would one day be his favourite shade red looks up, eyes widening and he thinks this too is when she falls in love with him. Youthful fantasy but he knows it always ringed true.

Her wrist shines in this world – bright, obvious. Tony reads it and for the first time he feels at home. Tony's is a dimmer light, but constant compared to the blaring light that came from her. A current of loyalty compared to the supernova of love. When Harrie reads it, mouthing the letters and realising it says her name, the smile she gives is one of pure happiness and light. It is not often that soulmate names match like theirs do.

They are like the stories – two people meant to be one.

* * *

**2.**

When Harrie is eleven, she tells Tony of magic in her dreams. She tells him of brilliant Hagrid who is half a giant and half a person so this must mean he must be something fantastic. She tells him of Hermione Granger who is a brilliant creature with a head that can never be too full, her mother's name written boldly across her wrist. She tells him of Ron Weasley who is a boy hidden behind the curtain of incredible brothers, striving for a bit of sunlight to allow him to grow, the name  _Hermione Jean Granger_  written in her terrible handwriting.

Tony in turn tells her of his single, solitary year in high school where it was obvious he didn't belong. He tells her of when he heads to MIT, great and incredible. She watches him in awe, as he goes on about science and theories she wasn't even able to comprehend. But the sheer joy in his face as he tried to explain what he was doing, showcasing thoughts and images of what their reality made him. One day, he tells her quietly of James Rhodes, Rhodey as he calls him, the greatest man he has come across, whose soulmate name he doesn't reveal. He is sombre in what has happened.

Tony had always been a physical child, always choosing to lie across Harrie compared to her almost shy countenance. She says he was young for what Rhodey had saved him from, Tony is quiet but nods, once.

'You are just a child,' she says, whispers into his dark hair, where he sits in between outstretched legs. 'We're both just children.'

'They won't allow us to be children.'

* * *

**3.**

When Harrie tells him of Sirius Black, of the great bounding dog turned man that protects with exposed gums and bloodshot eyes, there's a quite hope in her.  _Family_ , Sirius would whisper it in her hair when she finally decides to grab at his presence after he showed the name  _James Henry Potter_ , written in an almost perfect scrawl.

When the whole fiasco with Peter Pettigrew ends and Ron Weasley unable to use his legs for weeks, with Sirius in the wind, Harrie grows quieter.

He tells Rhodey, his only confidant in the way Hermione had been Harrie's of Sirius. They spend two weeks in England, finding Sirius quicker than any magical means and it is Rhodey who places his hands up and says, 'We love them and we would do anything for them.' The terrible mutt changes into a bedraggled man and he looks between the young boy Tony was and Rhodey who is the true hero of this story.

The godfather says, 'For her.'

Rhodey says, 'For him.' There's a nod between the two of them and with that, Sirius Black has Tony Stark's protection till the day he dies.

Their secret dream place is awash in soft yellow glows from the mythical, unburning sun above when Tony tells Harrie that one of the last remaining links to her family is safe. He doesn't tell her of the money he funnels to Remus Lupin for the honesty and hope he had given Harrie during her third year.

* * *

**4.**

She tells him of the Triwizard Cup – annoyed at the start, growing angrier and their seat by the pool growing darker as she becomes filled with more and more and more rage. To counteract it, Tony tells her of how Sirius is spending his time in the Stark house in London, bounding in the garden's light and racing up and down the halls without a care in the world. His safety a balm to Harrie's soul.

When Harrie is fifteen and he is seventeen, they meet for the first time outside of their dreams. She's sitting on a swing, ears ringing with her screams from the night and eyes burning with the face of a lifeless boy. Her hands feel weak and she feels like ash, ready to blow in the wind. She thinks – no she knows – that it was thanks to Tony that she didn't snap as she could have so easily done.

She looks up and she sees humanity standing in front of her. Her first thought was  _he's weak_ , he had never been a man to show his strength and as a child he had been a twig. Too much hair, too large eyes, too big of a grin. Too much wrapped in a naïve body. He comes to sit next to her, the swing sways as he rights himself.

'You're small.' She says, with a grin.

Tony lets out a chuckle, 'Look who's talking. Come on, sparky, I think there's a place for cheeseburgers not far from here.'

'Cheeseburgers.' Harrie shakes her head, 'you and your cheeseburgers.' By this time they come to the car where Rhodey stands by the driver's seat. She smiles at him, knowing who he is from Tony's stories.

'Rhodey, love of my life, meet the other love of my life, Harrie. Harrie, meet my honey-bear, my greatest platypus, my beloved snookums.'

'Oh it's darling to meet you honey-bear.' Harrie grins, after Rhodey comments there's two of them and Harrie and Tony laugh, because it's true – they were always too close, cut from the same cloth as it was.

The next morning sees a picture of them sitting in a park somewhere in London, with too much fish and chips that Harrie promptly doused in vinegar much the amusement of the boys. Harrie cuts the black and white photograph out from where Uncle Vernon threw the paper in the bin, having ignoring the society pages and going straight for the comics in the back. No one can see her face, Tony had made certain of it. She places it behind a beam, where only she can see it laying down in bed.

It joins another one of Hermione, Ron and her – a magical photograph, moving with smiles and grins. The pictures show two different worlds that she's fundamentally entwined within – the magical and the real, and she loves them both with a power unimaginable. She traces a face over Rhodey, who was cracking up laughing when she told him of Hermione's terror of getting expelled and then placed a finger on Tony's face who gazes at the two of them with a look that she knows because she does it when she looks at those she loves.

A few days later, Tony comes into her dreams with a black eye and a split lips. She learns to hate Howard Stark in a way that she couldn't scrounge up for even for Voldemort. He wouldn't tell her what that black eye was for, but Harrie had an inkling. The reasons for children like them were easy to pick out.

* * *

**5.**

Tony keeps a photograph within his drawer. He whispers about a girl with a fiery temper, quiet melancholy and devious bravery to his mother when his father isn't there. His mother smiles, sad.

'I am happy you found her.'

She is dressed to the nines, ignoring the purple on her son and makes sure that the dripping red doesn't touch her. Her mark on her wrist is bound tight, a name forgotten and most definitely not  _Howard Stark_.

The next night, his parents are dead. And so is Jarvis with the name on his wrist dark, no more shining  _Anthony Howard Stark_. And Tony becomes numb.

* * *

**6.**

Harrie decides that the Wizarding World can go to hell when she's sixteen. She grins at Tony in the dream and tells him to come to London. The next day, a private jet lands in Heathrow and Harrie is there, waiting for him with a large black dog, Hermione Granger on her other side and Ron Weasley next to her.

'I'm taking you into Wizarding London.' Harrie tells him with a grin as she leans up next to him. 'The others don't like it, but I'm sure you can hold your own.' She places a warm, warm hand in his. He greets her friends for the first time, smiling at Hermione who starts to ask questions about his degrees and Ron Weasley just looks at him as if he's some very odd, very exotic creature from the Amazon.

Harrie tells him it's because he's a muggle and Ron doesn't come by such people very often.

She takes him forward to the car that would take them to London, his hand clasped firmly in hers and they don't separate throughout the whole trip. From the bank run by goblins, to the joke store run by tricksters who have each other written on their wrists, Tony is in awe.

The coldness after Jarvis's death slowly dissipates and only truly goes when Harrie kisses him for the first time in their bedroom. He's kissed before, plenty of times before, slept with other men and women. He had intimacy with some of them and just a good, hard fuck with others.

This is different. This was warmth and security. It was not the best, in fact Tony is pretty sure it would be counted among one of the worst. But it was  _theirs_ , in a way it could be no one else's. He kisses her long and hard before falling asleep in her arms.

* * *

**7.**

Then comes the year that breaks them. Harrie tells him of her nightmares in real form, of the great snake lord and rising black smoke of prejudice and genocide. She weeps in his arms, terrified in her uncertainty and unsure in their future.

'They're killing people like you, Tony.' She whispers to him. She tells him of the diary, the ring, the locket, the diadem, the cup, and the snake too. He is horrified to his bones at the actions of the inhumane.

They lay in the bed, as close as they can touch and Harrie traces the stubble on his face as she says, 'we're going to have to shave this off you know.' The look on his face made her laugh like a madman, a hyena-like thing that makes Tony grin. It had been too long since she had laughed the way she had. 'You're well known Tony, not just as my muggle soulmate, but your Tony freaking Stark – you're well known even among my people.'

Later, much later after the destruction of their world and damnation of those against them, there is picture developed. Tony keeps it in his bedroom, the one in which no one could enter and would look at it. It shows a dark-haired woman, hair the colour of the inky sea with sharp amber eyes and no scar grinning up while being twirled by a red-haired, green eyed man. They're dancing, softly and constant in this moving picture – he couldn't remember the song, but it had been one of the greatest moments of his life.

The picture will follow him everywhere – this constant reminder of her constant presence in his life, of that ever-bounding love and joy.

One day, Tony will keep it close to his heart in a cave, blocked from the sunlight of her adoration.

* * *

**8.**

It all culminates in the end with the three. A stone, a cloak and a wand, earned with terror and blood, but hers nonetheless. She stares at the two people in front of her, her mother and father who look at her with hopeless loss in their eyes.

'Have I done well?'

'Yes.' They say, arms outstretched but nothing but a cold touch on her face.

She has a parasite in her head, a curse, a damned soul waiting to be expelled. She told only Tony, breaking down crying in the hall. Tony, her steadfast pillar, who had taken a year to aid them in a war not his own. He had followed her, lounging in a second-hand tent, watched with furious eyes as Ron left, spent time falling in love with Hermione's mind that ran on a different wavelength then his, but geniuses in their own right.

They had talked during their quiet times together, outside in the cold. They both had cups of tea in their hand – he hid the whisky for days in which they truly felt despair echo in their minds from the impossible quest an old fool had given Harrie.

That day, when she tells him in other words that she was to die, Tony had held her, held Harrie tight, instinctively knowing what was to come. He knew what horrors he will have to see at the day's dawn. He had kissed Harrie on the top of her head, kissed her and held her close, wishing for once that she could be a selfish woman instead of this, brave, idiotic girl he held close to his heart.

Tony wasn't there when Harrie faced her nightmare and closed her eyes to green, green light. Had he been there, he would have said fuck it to everything and taken her, hidden her somewhere where no one could find her. Kept her in the same way a dragon hoarded gold, his and no one else's to put claim to her.

* * *

**9.**

The first time Anthony Edward Stark truly murders someone is when he's nineteen and seething. Harrie's body is paraded through the courtyard with grinning madmen surrounding her. He's quiet, terribly quiet and he spots the bushy-haired Hermione watches him when he takes in the limp red-haired girl. There is pity in her gaze, hiding her own grief.

He hears the old McGonagall let out a devastating cry that would have been his had he been able to make a sound. But he is frozen, solid and for the first time in his life absolutely empty. This was not the numbness that fell him when Jarvis died. This was a roaring echo from an abyss that did not answer his pleas. The wrist which blazed for him alone was dark, no constant light emitting from the name written in his penmanship.

Tony knew that he would never feel happiness, lightness again.

The man, that terrible creature of whom his…his…Harrie had nightmares of since she was a child parades his wondrous prowess of killing a child that willingly came to him. Tony wouldn't believe it had he not known the sacrifice that Harrie willingly acted upon. Harrie was no coward – she was a brave, idiotic soul, through and through who laughed at death and made fun of madmen. She stared death happily, willingly and took all that was given to her. She was nothing more than a lamb coming to the slaughterhouse.

The gun that hid beneath his clothes is in his hands now. Action, reaction – it was instinctive. No on watches the only man without magic, no one watches as he brings up one of the weapons that his blood would make a fortune upon, no one watches as it fires, straight and true.

_Bang._

_Bang._

_Bang._

_Bang._

_Bang._

_Bang._

He shot only two but the echoes reverberated among all of them. Here was man of no magic but great might. Here was a man who despaired in silence and felt his soul damned. Tony stood a god among mortals, letting the arm fall and the gun to the ground with a clatter and final silence echoing.

Tom Marvolo Riddle falls. A puddle of blood behind his head and another staining his dark robes. A man who played at godhood whose position was usurped by someone who truly encompassed the entirety of the idea.

There is a loud scream, heart-wrenching even though it came from the opposite side and Tony looks up as a mad woman came towards him. A literal connotation of a Fury comes towards him, like deity of vengeance and damnation. It is Bellatrix Lestrange, he thinks for a moment. The woman who destroyed Hermione all those weeks ago, who wrote  _mudblood_  over her mother's name.

And now she desires to the same to him. He wonders for one second if she would take Harrie's name from his arm, so he would never have to see that warm, constant love that signalled his devotion to the sad creature lying dead.

He sees a red line of magic come towards him and he is on the floor with devastating pain and terror running through his veins. There is a terrible silence in his ears, like the way the waves sound underneath the sea.

There is a dog rushing past him and a dog falls. Tony slowly watches the last vestiges of who Harrie was disappear as the dog lets out a whine, a puddle of blood disappearing into fur from the slit across his neck.

It is then that Tony weighs the life of this witch, of this woman who believed her better than him simply for the blood running through his veins. And when he weighs it to all else he knew, Tony Stark found it lacking.

It is that day that Tony Stark becomes the Merchant of Death.

* * *

**10.**

Harrie meets Edwin Jarvis when she's dead. The man that is Tony's father in all ways but biological. He smiles at her, sad and soft, pulling her into a hug. For a moment Harrie stays still, quiet – even now, still unsure at the contact that came with unconditional love. There may be no physical similarity between Edwin Jarvis and Tony Stark, but she sees familiarity in that mischievous glint that never goes away or that smile Tony had when he looked at her when he believed no one else was watching him.

'Oh darling girl,' Jarvis says, standing in front of her. He raises his hands up and lays them upon her face. They are cold against her, terribly so in a way that told her that something wasn't exactly right. She feels her hair on her arms rising on her arms. 'I cannot thank you enough for what you have given that boy.'

'No, I think I have to thank you for what you made him into. He's a good man.' A quiver to her voice and a wet smile grace her person, then a sniffle.

'One of the best I have come to know.' Harrie lets out a sob and hugs him close to her.

'You and you alone have made him into a man that I can love with all my being. He is so easy to love.'

'Yes, that boy is. I am happy he will still have you in his life. Go, my girl, he waits for you.' Edwin Jarvis places a cold kiss on her forehead and she wakes with the warm hand of Tony Stark on her cheek.

He stares down at her with horrified awe at the heart beating almost-ichor through her veins. As she stares up at him, she hears her heart beating in her ears and realises that she should not have survived.

* * *

**11.**

She is seventeen when she enters his room in the apartment they shared in London, silent feet padding to sit by his bed. Harrie doesn't feel real, her fingers can't feel the sheets beneath her fingers nor the silk of her negligee. She wasn't able to taste the food on her tongue nor the drink she had earlier that night. She would look outside and see the bright, shining lights of Singapore and think of the empty vacuum of space – cold and unfeeling.

It was not a good day.

Tony watches her for a moment, places the tablet he used down on the bedside table and takes her hand in his. Harrie shakes. She breaks and looks at him with green eyes of death and her face, normally valleys of life in smiles and laughs become devoid of the very thing that made her  _Harrie_. She's motionless, the breakage happening inside her, leaving a shell in her place and Tony holds her close to him.

His warmth burns like the sun she loved to sleep under. The early stages of stubble along his jaw poke and prod in her skin, hot breath burrowing into her skin. Most of all, she hears his heart – steady and constant,  _ba-doom_ ,  _ba-doom_ ,  _ba-doom_ , slower than the ticking of the clock in the room. She breathes and counts.

When she gets to eighty-four, she asks, '–make me real.' The whisper echoes in Tony's ears, fingers gliding across the mark on his wrist that foretell their connection, their inability to be without another. 'Show me I'm alive. Tony, please make me warm.'

He takes his hands, takes her body and slowly brings her to the bed. He looks at her and she looks at him, dusk light illuminating the gold of her skin and red of her hair. The crackling fire shines red through his hair and dances gold across his skin.

They are creatures cut of the same cloth, golden and bright – gods in human form with mortal vices and immortal desires.

They do not sleep within one another that night, they don't fuck too. But what happens is just as intimate, just as opening and revealing. In soulmate culture there is mentions of looks, communication that is easy and understandable – it is no different for Harrie and Tony.

She nods once and Tony starts to breathe life back into her. His hands go to her negligee, and pulls it off so slowly, so delicately as if she was horse easily startled and not a human being on the border of being so broken she'd never be the same again. Tony's eyes don't stray from hers, keeping green and brown locked. His fingers go to her underwear, watching as always for uncertainty. He brings them down and allows her to step out of them.

Tony allows her hands on him, shedding the clothes much in the same way as he did her. Slowly, watchful, waiting for something to crack. The shirt, the shorts, the socks and underpants and in much the same way he stands there allowing her to peruse him, take him in and realise this is what the universe has decreed her equal, her half.

And for the first time since they've known one another, they are at each other's mercy.

'You know what I feel?' Tony asks, placing the hand over her mouth and noise. 'Air, breath.' He lets his hand drag down, a chill where it once was before it rest on top of her left breast, he bends forward, placing his ear on her chest and Harrie breathes slowly with a shiver. 'A heartbeat.' His hands go to her wrists, softly and gently turning her hands over so he can trace the veins and arteries up and down her arms. 'The blood in these arms.'

He stops there, eyes taking in Harrie – closed eye, mouth slightly parted and her breath slightly faster. Tony's fingers slide to her shoulders, pressing slightly on the freckles that cover the golden, tanned skin and holds her close to him. Skin on skin, warmth on warmth, life on life.

He will wonder afterwards how something so constant between the two of them could be destroyed so easily. How they forget each other in their need to feel something after a war that stole their very persons, their very sense of being and absolution.

But he knows, so obviously knows in the way that Harrie said  _do what you want,_   _I can't give it to you, I'm sorry._ He will realise that it wasn't a go-ahead in the way he thought it was, but rather a plea for patience and commitment. He wouldn't give to her, not when he should have.

With the war ended but adrenaline still pumping through their veins and nightmares dancing behind their eyes, Harrie and Tony turn to their vices. Tony dances long into the night with alcohol on his breath and powdered drugs on his fingertips, cum slides down his clothes and the finishes of sex on his skin. He wakes up the next day with another girl, another boy, another girl, another boy, and so it goes.

Tony knows that Harrie hates it when she watches the parade of pretty creatures walk through their door after a night when she does decree to come home. She says nothing, this creature who asks for nothing and receives nothing. But it does not make her an angel for her own vices may not be in alcohol and bodies but in blood and fights.

Harrie finds herself an auror, a policing force that was exactly that – a force that could not be budged. She thinks she's like that question Tony liked to use when speaking about the two of them in unison: what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?

But now, they are both unstoppable – constant in their desires and decisions, freely moving. Neither a rock to ground the other.

She goes to work with a single-minded determination, a kamikaze mission more often than not. She lives though, she comes back alive and kicking – feeling life in her sinew and ichor in her body. Harrie is silent in her missions, constant watchfulness and paranoia colliding through her mind.

Harrie doesn't shy away from getting her hands dirty. She knows what they call her in the offices, what the scum of the wizarding world call her – the Devil, for what else could she be when she comes to judge them for their sins. She rips into their ligaments, she tears through their minds, and she ravages their very being. The war had taught her that. The only thing that remains from her utter annihilation of creatures are bruised, torn knuckles and the flickers of blood on her face.

The war had made her this.

Devil, devil – they call her. But even Lucifer was beloved before he fell and Harrie hadn't fallen and with Tony there, patching her hands and mending her scrapes, she knows she never will.

 _Lethal force allowed_ , had been her allowance and for someone with death in her lungs and destruction between her fingers she took it as gospel.

There are screaming matches. Horrible things where they use pieces of verbal diatribe to cut into each other, what unknown wounds made worse like salt in cuts. Their friends, both magic and not watch with silent judgement as two opposable forces collide again and again. Hermione and Ron whisper caution to which Harrie throws it in the wind. Rhodey yells at Tony, desperate in his need for him to return to the boy he was.

They want their brilliant creatures back, those they followed for they were boundless like the sun.

But Harrie and Tony continue to collide until one day they stop and Harrie wakes from a dream, looks down, the killing curse almost on her breath as Tony looks up at her, breathing as heavy as she did. She slide off him, her hands tight around the wand she had stolen from a madman, hand flickers to the ring with a rock and hand touching the cloak that always stayed by their bed.

She shakes and shakes, and Tony just sits, away from her still catching his breath as he stares at. It had been a dream, it had been a nightmare that took on physical actions to prevent it.

'Perhaps it's time you step away from your job.' He says.

'I can say the same thing with you and your weapons.' Harrie had always known how to cut the most. Their fight is something grand then. Something so cosmically terrifying that even his robots know to stay away from her.

She disappears the next day, no one knows where she went. Tony would take a glass filled with whisky, sit on their balcony in the cool March air and look at that picture where they twirl, twirl, and twirl.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, you can find me at [heliosae](https://heliosae.tumblr.com/) on tumblr!


	2. and the second die quietly

1.

Unspeakable. Unspeakable. Unspeakable. It her job. It is her profession. Those were her actions. They place her there when she calls for it, hiding within the backlogs of the ministry, her name spread like a legend among the underground workings of those in magic. A legend, a myth, a god, even some would say.

But Harrie knows what she is. She is a broken weapon, set so perfectly that her ammunition hits whatever she is directed at but with no thought.  _Lethal force allowed_  indeed. She almost hates Shacklebolt for allowing it, she couldn't have stopped herself, not when her life been so drenched in destruction.

Her dossier only had one order: find something.

Find something new, perhaps – new runes, new spells, and new people. Find something terrible – terrible people, terrible clothes, and terrible choices. Find something amazing – amazing scenes, amazing people, and amazing magic. She finds men who fly high above her with mechanical wings, almost like Icarus but better; finds a man who can make someone as small as an insect, stares at research using spiders and meets a panther in human form. Harrie has always known that those without magical means were marvellous, constantly improving where their world was stagnating since the time of imperial rule.

She finds these things hoping for something to connect her, because there is loneliness clawing at her with an almighty roar. To attack, to have it be nothing but a forgotten whisper, she finds men and women who eagerly jump into her bed. She wonders what Tony finds so absolute about it. Perhaps it's that physical intimacy he receives from it, but as she lays by the countless men and women from all over the world, she feels more alone than ever. She is lonely, constantly so.

Harrie knows though, it had always been there since the moment she left him.

She finds herself in places all around the globe – from Norway to Tokyo, from Kenya to Australia, from Wakanda to America. She learns and watches, she fights and bleeds. She heals from those silent wounds the war had inflected upon her though there are still nights where she wakes half-terrified and a hand outstretched for a body not there. She doesn't dream, just sleeps and wakes up groggily more often than not, magical sleeping pills by her bedside.

Harrie still finds herself around the edges of her society, sometimes with Luna Lovegood who had the name  _Jane Foster_. New Mexico is where they stay, with scientists who speak about something she could never get. Give Harrie curses and dark magic, she'll be able to tell you where they came from and what they would do. But science…that had always been more Tony's realm.

Sometimes she finds herself in the steaming Amazon rainforest with Neville Longbottom by her side as she tries to enter long abandoned magical ruins to find  _something_. More often than not, it was Neville patching her up from singes and burns she obtained – those who used to live in the Amazon had loved their fire. Even after more than seven years, Harrie never knew who Neville had written on his arm.

Harrie makes sure to never appear in large pockets of civilization, though at this stage she wonders if anyone was looking for her. It's been years since she asked for Kingsley to give her this mission.

But her self-exile implodes when she finds herself in Budapest, Hungary. Harrie sits on a bed in an old, run down hotel with two almost-children behind her. Their hands drip with blood, their eyes old and their very being littered with old scars, overlayed with new. She had patched them up, watched them to make sure they breathe. Her own body is half-destroyed, blood caking her face and her hands all but destroyed. She has her first aid kit laid out on an old newspaper, spots of blood and tissues covering most of. But it is there that Harrie reads the words that shock her to her very core:

_Stark heir missing._

It resounds in her mind, her heart felt like it stopped in her chest. She makes noise which wakes the young woman up and she watches Harrie with uncertainty in her eyes as she reads the page.

There is a picture of Tony, with that cheeky grin so damningly him and dressed to the nines. A flash of coldness erupts through her, freezing her body before her anger grows hot and steadily rising in temperature until it simmers under her skin, like lava underneath the earth.

Moments later sees her exploding into an office with grey smoke and magic coursing through her body. She thinks she's like Medusa there – anger and vengeance exploding deep out of her with an undercurrent of terror and an almost plea slithering through her movements. There is another man in Shacklebolt's rooms, a man similar in his stature, grand and imposing, only he comes with an eyepatch.

Harrie ignores him.

'Why didn't you tell me?' She snarls, placing the Bulgarian newspaper on the benchtop, staring deep into her supervisor's contemplating eyes. Her question was more of a criticism, a barb set deep for his chest.

'You were on a mission.'

'Why didn't you tell me?' it's a growl this time and both the men in the room stiffen. For here is a predator, awaiting them with a prowl of death. But Shacklebolt knew her in a way not many knew her, he knew the darkness and inhumanity that arose after her flicker with death. And he knew how to handle her without getting singed.

'You were on a mission, Potter.'

'Which you should have pulled me from, the moment he disappeared!'

'You wouldn't have saved two of his agents if I did.'

'To hell with them.' She whispers. ' _He_  could be dead.'

'But he isn't, Potter.' He points to her wrist which blazes his name, those sharp letters constant in their light.

'If he dies, Kingsley – if he dies before I get to him. I will rip those agents for living when he doesn't.' She twirls and starts to walk out, graceful ease to every step.

'And where do you think you're going, Potter?'

'I just told you: to find Tony Stark!' And the door slams and then a crack could be heard.

The next moment sees Harrie come face to face with a piles of sand and a long arid landscape. She thinks she must be on an alien world, like those one Hermione would tell her about where famous witches and wizards had travelled a long time ago.

It is inhospitable, hot air pounding against her and her throat feels parched even though she drunk enough. She glances around and realises she had made a mistake.

She can see why wizarding folk didn't stay around muggles as much as they once had – there was always a fear of the unknown with them. And Tony had shown them all that a muggle was just as deadly without magic than they were with magic. Harrie has faced much during the years exploring the globe but this type of scenario never sat well with her, after all the last time it happened was in Valencia, Madrid.

Fifty armed soldiers, wearing the brown military fatigues all faced her with guns aimed directly towards her. Harrie glances down, eying the red dots and then back up at them instantly placing her hands up. If she thought back on the scenario, she's pretty sure she'd laugh about it – but her terror regarding Tony's situation and anger towards Shacklebolt made her stop. Normally, she was shoot first, ask questions – but this was for Tony, this was for him.

'My name is Harrie Potter and I am here to help you find Tony Stark.' She says. 'Is Colonel James Rhodes here? He can confirm what I'm saying.'

And there, like Moses parting the Red Sea, stands Rhodey looking older and more tired than ever before. He looks at her with a hard gaze and Harrie knows he sees not the teenage girl that went running from his greatest friend, his brother, but someone so very different. She stands tall, head held up and looks at him without guilt in her face but plenty in her heart. And he knows it too.

'I can vouch for her.' He says finally and leads her away from the inquisitive people who wonder how someone could have appeared out of nowhere, with only a pop to signal her arrival.

* * *

2.

'Tony says you guys meet in dreams.'

'Yeah,' Harrie says, arms coming to wrap around herself as she sat against the wall of one of the buildings. 'We do.'

'Then why don't you sleep and find where Tony is?' Rhodey says.

'Platypus, I've been medicating myself so I don't dream. I haven't seen him since that night.'

'Damn it, Harrie.' He whispers, placing a hand on her shoulder as he comes to sit down next to him. They sit outside, facing those endless miles of desert plains. Harrie faces the mountains, knowing without truly understanding that he's there somewhere. Hidden among absolutely nothing, a needle hidden among needles.

'You left Harrie,' he sighed then, giving her a cup of badly brewed tea. Rhodey had always chased the bitterness of coffee over the flavoured water that she and Tony had enjoyed. 'It destroyed him. You saw him now and you wouldn't know who he was. He was begging for you to come back and you cut him out like he was nothing.'

Harrie closes her eyes, breathes deeply and then opens her eyes to gaze back towards the mountain.

'Do you know why?'

'He never said why. He wouldn't.'

'I almost killed him Rhodey, I dreamed and I almost killed him.' He gets up then, back straight and facing the desert outside the army compound. Harrie closes her eyes, knowing that she had lost Rhodey – he had always been Tony's in a way that Ron and Hermione…Sirius had been hers.

Finally Rhodey turned around, looked towards Harrie with another look in his eyes, this time she was unable to describe what it was. She thinks it's pity, sadness and desperation all slot together. He knows that she was…is a child of war, born and bred on it, like Ares or Odin, demanding it in strides and actions.

'I want to show you something,' he says, rolling up his sleeve as he sits down. Harrie watches as he looks at the wrist before extending it so she could see it. The light is dull, constant like Tony's was – an undercurrent of loyalty, a constant. She wants to weep when she reads the name.

For it reads:  _Anthony Howard Stark_ , in the same penmanship hers was in.

'Go.' Rhodey says, placing forehead on forehead. 'Go find him.'

And she did.

* * *

3.

It was almost too much of a coincidence, but Harrie had known for a long time that the universe had always wanted them together than apart. And finally, when she ignores all the pushes and prods – all the whispers of Tony Stark by scientists in New Mexico, the financial aid presented in Amazon within Brazil, and the gadgets she noticed in Budapest – the universe gives her a beacon of hope.

Harrie is the first there, magic propelling her so she can finally see him. She finds herself in the sand, next to Tony almost sobbing with peace and acceptance. Harrie grabs him by the worn-out clothes and just holds him close to her, ignoring the piece of metal protruding from his chest.

'Oh,' Tony says, blinking up at her, the desert sun high above them both. 'You came back to me.'

'Of course, you silly man. Of course.' She looks down at him and has never seen something so  _beautiful_. Oh, this man – this strong, hopeful creature with stars on his fingertips and eyes set for the sun and beyond. She does love, she does and now, maybe, she can finally, finally show it the way he had deserved. 'I'm not going. I'm not going.'

Around them broken bits of metal and the mountains behind them are on fire, hiding the terrors and desolation of Anthony Stark.

'Good.' He says. 'Good.'

* * *

4.

They don't talk, not truly, not during the time he devoured those five cheeseburgers. Her cheek still stings from where Pepper Potts slaps her and her body prickles with the venomous glances of Happy Hogan. Rhodey says nothing when it happens because she minutely shakes her head, allowing this protectors of Tony do with her what she wished she could do to herself.

She likes the fact that he has brought these people around him, these loyal, loyal individuals. When she sits back from them, letting Hogan and Potts overtake her role as someone to stand by his side, she watches as they fret and touch him the way she wished she could.

When they come to the press room, Harrie sits right at the back sitting next to Rhodey. She can feel both of their bodies just relax, their adrenaline that had been keeping them on their toes, Rhodey longer than her, finally crashing.

'You wouldn't think he spent a three months in captivity with the way he's acting,' Harrie says. Tony sits without a care in the world, eating a McDonald's cheeseburger, it's his third since they pulled up through the drive through and the second since they entered the building. Tony acted the way Tony always acted, flamboyant and obvious – but the more you look, the more those understated changes are more obvious.

'He always does.'

'What? Rhodey are you saying he's been abducted before?'

'A few times, but never as long as this.' Rhodey sighed and leant back in his seat.

'Why am I hearing about this now?' Harrie snaps, looking back at Tony. She wonders how many of those scars hiding under his clothes he got because she wasn't by his side, protecting him as he would her. 'I should have been told. I should have.'

'Tony didn't want to bother you – that Kingsley guy, the big one who's supposedly your boss, wanted to but Tony made sure he shut his mouth.'

'Wait – Kingsley knew. Tony was taken by wizards?'

'Witches, vampires, giants and I think there may have been a hag sometime as well.'

'I should have been told, he wouldn't have bothered me.' Harrie whispers and then places her head into her hands, 'Oh god. What have I done between the two of us?'

'You fucked it up, witchy. Fucked it up big time.' Rhodey leans back, putting a hand through his hair and grimacing. 'God, I hate travelling. I'd give my left hand for a shower.'

Tony then places the last of the cheeseburger into his mouth, closes his eyes and looks directly towards Harrie. He speaks of accountability, death and his father. Harrie has an inkling of where this is going and then when she hears the words, she wonders what exactly had happened over there.

'Effective immediately, the weapons division of Stark Industries is shut down.'

* * *

5.

She had never liked the house in Malibu, having been in it once already. There was something oppressive, something distinctive – Harrie had always known it had never wanted her there. Pepper watched her for a moment before leaving, Happy too. But Rhodey whispers something to Tony, something she can't hear and then he too is gone.

And so, it's Tony and her. And as the door closes, it almost thunders with absolution. Harrie watches Tony as he putters around the rooms. He had done this all the time after the war, touching things and making sure they would been safe. Finally he stops when he comes to the bar, eyes focused upon her.

'You're drinking again.' Harrie says, leaning against the glass of Tony's house. The bar was stocked full and she hated the sight of it. It had been a source of constant antagonism between the two of them, similar to the way her seeking of those adrenaline-pumping behaviours. There had been a moment there where they both stopped.

But, well. A fight. And it had just happened again.

'You weren't in the dreams.' He says, pouring himself a little too much of the whiskey he adored during their youth. This one is something old, something different and expensive judging by the smell – a man Harrie had killed in Russia had enjoyed a similar drink.

'No,' she says, 'I wasn't.' She watches as Tony pours her a drink and slides it across to her. She sees how he doesn't want to touch her – she noticed it on the plane. In the end, she had placed things next to him to be picked up. Harrie doesn't take the drink, merely nurses it in her hand when she walks over to stand in front of him.

There's a kitchen benchtop between the two of them now and she hates what it signified. That echoing chasm that had been fractured thanks to her actions. She doesn't know if Tony would extend an arm. She wouldn't had she been faced with herself after what she had done.

'Four years Harrie.' Tony said.

'Long time.'

'Yeah.' Tony says. 'Long time.' He was quiet now, eyes downcast and Harrie knew she said the wrong thing. 'I hope you founded what you needed.' Tony laughs, humourlessly. 'Did you?'

'Somewhat. I found what I had to.'

'What you had to? You could have founded it here. I needed you.' He snaps.

'And I needed to go.' Harrie snaps back. 'Tony. I was fading away here.'

'Then go.' He roars. 'Go and run Harrie, if that's all you know how to do.'

'I nearly killed you Tony.' Harrie snarls right back. 'If you want to know what I found by leaving – it was a way to stop that. I couldn't live knowing that there would one day be a moment where I would wake up, see a flash of green and spend the rest of my life knowing that I killed you.'

He looked at her stunned. She wonders if Tony was feeling what Ariadne felt when Theseus had left her on that island. She wonders if he felt like Jason and Medea when both of their betrayals erupted between them. She wonders if he felt like Menelaus when Helen had fled.

'You…you didn't know, did you? You had no idea what  _my_  magic would have done to you? What  _my_  mind would have made me done?' Harrie whispers, a sob nearly erupting from her throat. But this was not needed, she didn't need all these emotions. Not now. 'I was going to kill you that morning. I was going to say the words and I didn't know it was even you. You weren't you…you were Bellatrix, Tom, Barty…you were every man and woman who would utter the same words I would have said to you.'

'Harrie.' He says.

'I'm not running. Not anymore. I think I'm better. I know I am,' she says, looking at the darkness of the ocean. She turns her back to him, safe in her knowledge that he was still there. Tony comes to stand next to her, slightly behind. She feels the movement and then it drop from her senses – was he going to touch her, place a hand on her shoulder? 'Do you hear me, Tony Stark? I am staying right here, in sunny Malibu. They will have to rip me from you. You're going to get so sick and tired of me,' she laughs here. 'That you're going to wish I was gone.'

Tony is quiet, the whisky long forgotten from his touch, but lingering on his breath. Harrie could feel his gaze as he looks down at her and she felt like a criminal awaiting her sentence – she feels little, weak, unable to do anything. It is so different from who she portrays herself to be – Harrie Potter, the Girl-Who-Lived, the Woman-Who-Hunted, the Devil, the madwoman. Normally she's strong, walking into a room as if she owns the place, constantly being greater, made greater than what she should be.

But Tony saw through it all and broke her down to her basic components.

His hand hovers again for a moment, before they clasp at her arms and spins her around. He places his forehead onto hers and just breathes. Harrie lets out a stuttering breath, slowly before relaxing into his hold and watches a small smile.

'It's your choice now. I have a place, small – just a ten minute drive from here. I'm happy to go there, if you need.'

'You need to figure out what you want, Harrie.' Tony says after a moment of silence. 'I'm here. I've always been here. It's time you make your choice.' He looks at Harrie then and says, 'I'm done begging for you to return.'

'I know.' She says. 'But I'm here too. And it may take a long while before you realise this, but I'm willing to wait.'

Green eyes meet brown again and Tony says, 'Stay. Here, with me. Don't run.'

* * *

6.

Tony came with his own quirks, the same way she had come with warning labels. It was interesting relearning them. He had always been a man who would spend many countless nights awake, whether it was welding, writing, or working. She had known this, but she never had realised until then how much it could take over his life.

When they had been young, Rhodey used to tell her of their days at MIT. Of those countless nights where he slept with a fire extinguisher by his side, becoming friendly with the firemen that came and always making sure there was something there to say thank you. He would tell her of the way that mind work, different in the way it was to his and hers.

Rhodey and Harrie had always been warriors, soldiers – maybe not bloodthirsty in the way their youth had once been, but their vigilance was obvious. They would gaze at reflections, catalogue those they've seen again throughout the day, assessing exits and entrances. They would talk one day about only able to sleep on hard surfaces, how the slightest sound woke you up and the way that day could be so oppressive that you wished for something real.

Tony had been different. The way he could look at something and connect it to something entirely different in some sort of roundabout way of thinking. His time with her, during what should have been her seventh year had honed his weaponry and he looked for weakness and strength alike. Tony had known danger, truly lived and breathed it with her. And by doing so, he knew how to destroy any whisper of it until it never rose up against him.

It was why Harrie wasn't shocked with suit of armour that cloaked Tony in the way her cloak of invisibility did her.

'This is how you go out.' She says, hands placed upon the metal of the suit. It was bright red and gold. Her colours. His colours now.

'This is how I got out.' He says.

* * *

7.

She never liked Obadiah Stane, hated him from the moment those ugly and jealous eyes landed upon Tony like he was nothing but a piece of meat. Once, a long time ago, when she entered a soiree upon Tony's arm, a dignified woman of upmost social standing she promised Obadiah Stane one thing:

'If he is hurt by your hand, you will see why my enemies are terrified of me.'

It appears he didn't take that to heart. His descent to tyranny and treason against Tony and everything he stood for didn't shock her. But what shocked Harrie was his lack of belief that she would hurt him.

There's a slither of skin, underneath the metal helmet that Stane wears. Harrie's wand is too far away and Pepper too close by for her to release uncontrolled magic. But there is a gun, the gun she's carried since Tony had killed Tom Riddle, because sometimes it's the non-magical means that ends the conflict. It takes the same amount of bullets that Tony had when he killed Tom Riddle to bring down his enemy.

_Bang._

_Bang_.

And it echoes as the man in the metal suit falls, gasping as the blood is drenched around him.

Harrie rises, up and towards him, grabbing her wand where it had rolled from her and she looks down at the breathless villain. She watches him, eyes cold and a look of absolute hatred on her face. She kneels down, ignoring the blood seeping into the leg of her pants. She wrenches the iron helmet off.

Obadiah Stane looks up, not with fear in his eyes but anger. Harrie watches him breathe wetly, a hand goes to his face and that is when he changes. She could watch the rippling change from surety in survival to fear when something greater comes to stand in front of him.

'I told you to never lay a hand on him.' She says and brings the gun up, eyes damning with her conviction. She presses the trigger again and Obadiah Stane is no more.

Later, when they're waiting for Happy to return and the start of what would one day be SHIELD cleaning up their mess, Pepper turns to Harrie where she sits under Tony's arm.

'I guess I was wrong about you.'

Harrie raises an eyebrow, 'Wrong?'

'I thought you were a cold bitch.'

Harrie starts laughing at this, a full laugh. It was not often that someone called her cold – she had always ran hot, a temper that no one she knew could rival, a person that would shoot first, and make split second decisions. She wasn't like Tony in this respect, who had always run cooler, who would devise plans to bring down his enemies and watch before acting.

* * *

8.

They meet in the dreams again, despite sleeping next to one another. It is the first time that Harrie has left the drugs she took by her bedside, untouched. It's Tony that sees her first, like he had done all those years ago. There's a softness in his gaze, and forgiveness too.

When they wake up, it is Harrie that looks at Tony first. The dappled sunlight of outside drifts across his still face – he is peaceful. She watches the shadows make him look younger than their ages and she could almost imagine him at nineteen, when they were at the top of their world, before they came back crashing to the ground with hidden wounds seeping their strength.

As Tony wakes, there is no fear – not in the way there was when he first came back from the desert that broke him. He knew, without a speck of doubt, that when he opened his eyes – she'll be there. And there she was, physically there – always there.

There is blood on her hands, cleaned now – but Harrie had always been a creature who could never get rid of what she was. And she had always been someone who had enjoyed the physicality of a fight, especially in her later years where she'd once come home covered in blood and bruises. He takes her hand in his, placing it up into the sunlight above.

There are callouses on her palm, her fingernails all but ruined and scars on her knuckles. At least this had remained the same.

'I think I may love you.' Harrie says.

'You may?' Harrie laughed at the incredulous tone. 'Sweetheart, you always did, like me. Like me - I loved you the moment I saw you.' Harrie looks over to Tony. He was open, always was when it came to her – wearing that heart on his sleeve. She pushes him down, places him on the mattress. A hand is placed on his cheek, another on where his heart pulsed a steady rhythm.

'Yes. You're right – I have always loved you. And I am sorry for what I did. I should have stayed and gotten better by your side.'

'No.' He whispers, shaking his head. 'No. You stayed and we would have destroyed ourselves, witchy. You did what you had to do.'

He moves a hand to her face and then lays the other warm one on the slither of skin peeking from where her shirt was raised. There is a question there, in that touch and Harrie answers it with a kiss.

Deep and powerful, constant and soft. Tony's hand tightens on her waist, his other goes to clasp her cheek to bring her flush against him.

Harrie took off his shirt, slowly, eyes ignoring the glowing blue arc-reactor, his heart but rather touches the scars that littered his chest. He had grown old, they both have and here was the statement to their time away from another. There were more scars than she knew – while there were once she recognised like the one from Bellatrix in Malfoy Manor he sustained or the soldering burn he had on his left-hand knuckle, there were more she didn't. There were scars over the ones she had known, hiding their story with more terrible ones.

He whispers their stories in the breaths between their kisses, devises some ludicrous scenarios she knows are a storyteller's dream.

Tony breaks the kiss between them and says, 'I have loved you. I always will.'

'Good.' She chuckles as she kisses his neck. 'Good.'

* * *

9.

The man with the eyepatch is sitting on the couch, looking across the ocean. Harrie, wearing nothing but Tony's ragtag shirt and a pair of scandalous panties, looks at him for a moment.

'I know you from somewhere, don't I.' She goes over to the bar and pours herself a glass of orange juice. She clicks her fingers, 'Kingsley's office. You're that eyepatch fellow, the one that looked after those children who botched that mission in Budapest.' She takes a big gulp and then looks at him. 'That was a fuck-up that even Tony and I could never do.'

She comes to sit in the chair across from him and smiles, 'What can I do for you, Fury-man?'

When he tells her of the blue cube found in a cold ocean, she laughs in his face.

'No. Fuck no. You leave that for stronger creatures than those of this world.'

* * *

10.

There are aliens in New York City.

Harrie stares up at the gaping hole in the sky and feels a coldness at the spectrum of space that peaks through. It comes from Stark Tower.

Harrie Potter faces a god.

And for her troubles, she gets a staff to her midsection.

'JARVIS?' She whispers, ignoring those sickly blue eyes that watch as she stumbles into the bar, holding tight on the marble countertop. She leaves sticky red handprints as she slides down the red wood. Thankful that the colour of the bar allows her blood to seep in, making it seem that it's not so bad, not so destructive to have a hole in the middle of her body. 'JARVIS. Where is Tony? I…I want Tony…I need Tony.'

'It's okay Harrie, he is coming. Just stay a little longer.'

But she doesn't because Harrie dies.

* * *

11.

Harrie sees Howard Stark and Maria Stark in front of her; there is a snarl exploding across her face. She punches Howard Stark and tells him, 'Get out. Get out. Get out. You're welcome nowhere. You're never welcome here.' Harrie stands proudly with blood dripping down her body as she looks at him. 'Tony Stark is an easy man to love and the fact that you couldn't means that you are a monster.'

Maria Stark looks at Harrie and flinches from the anger in her eyes.

'And you. Why couldn't you love him?' Harrie demands. 'He's so easy to love.'

* * *

12.

Harrie wakes for the second time with death on her breath, the metallic taste of blood and the first thing she says is, 'I punched your dad in the face. Do you know he has a face fit for punching?'

And Tony cackles and clutches her to his chest. As she steadily rises, Harrie sees Loki sitting in the middle of the crater and she goes forward, but Tony's hand as always holds her back.

'Let me go,' she snarls, trying to move from the ironclad grip Tony had on her. 'Let me go – let me at him!' But Tony merely brings her closer, holds her closer into his metal cocoon.

'Honey, you're brave and courageous but you're an idiot.' Tony whispers into her ear, his helmet up and the two soulmates look upon the god with wary eyes. 'Don't go fighting a god.'

'I won't be fighting a god,' Harrie proclaims. 'I'll be fighting a spineless fuckwit! You prat, you absolute prat.'

'I love you, I do but you really are an idiot,' Tony closes his eyes and opens them to look upward, asking something to give him strength. 'Harrie! Did you not see what he did?'

'Yeah I did. I  _felt_  it. He–'

'I know what he did and I'd shoot him here if I was sure he'd stay dead. But come on, you know the tales better than I do when it comes to Loki.'

'Fucking hell.' Harrie finally frees herself from Tony's arms and sits on the seat by the destroyed bar staring at those blue eyes that watch her with cocky smirk that hid his fear. 'You're bloody lucky because if I had you and he didn't convince me, you'd be begging for mercy. So I suggest you go on your knees and thank him for his forgiveness.'

'I'm just happy that he has a brain as it's obvious you don't.'

Tony goes forward and drags her back to him as she snarls, 'Let me at him, let me at him, you let me at him! For fuck sake, that arse deserves to be twelve feet under. Let me at him!'

And that when the Avengers meet Harrie Potter.

* * *

13.

Tony makes sure to wipe all evidence of Harrie's death, keeping a copy in his private servers to remind him of his fallacy. To remind him of his greatest weakness.

* * *

14.

Central park in spring is perhaps only second on her favourite places in the world, Hogwarts in winter would always strike a chord of home in her. They look to where gods and heroes stand side by side.

Harrie looks towards Loki, who still looks at with those cold, cold blue eyes.

'In my war,' she says to Thor, a living god in front of her. Tony had been giddy in his excitement, in much the same way she was too. 'Our enemy would do things to our friends to make them unlike themselves, your brother carries the same eyes. I'd suggest healers, because even gods can be persuaded.'

* * *

15.

'I'll keep your secret, deathless.' Loki tells Harrie moments before he is set to leave. Harrie says nothing and looks into eyes filled with magic and mischief. She gives a solid nod and watches as he walks towards his brother, ready to face whatever trials and tribulations of their father.

'He would have looked better in thread.' Harrie mutters to Tony, she smiles at the glacial glare that the Old Norse god gives her. The god should tremble at their feet as does the rest of the world, she thinks – they do not go quietly into the dark for the dark do not want them.

They leave, arm in arm, together as the universe had decreed it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who stayed till now! I know I said I would have this up quickly, but uni kicked my arse and then work decided to beat to the ground. Anyway, now that's over and done with, here the chapter! I knew I said it would be a three part piece, but I was quite happy with the way it ended overall.
> 
> I hope you guys all enjoyed it!
> 
> As always, you can find me at [heliosae](https://heliosae.tumblr.com/) on tumblr!

**Author's Note:**

> I hope that everyone enjoyed this piece as much as I enjoyed writing it. It became quite a good procrastination for some of my research assignments! I was quite pleased with the way it turned out. I think this will be a three part series, I have some of it plotted, but definitely can't wait to finish it off. I'm half-way through the second chapter which I hope to upload sometime next week or the week after! 
> 
> Come say hi on tumblr, [heliosae](https://heliosae.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Thank you for reading! :)


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